[OSGeo-Discuss] Command line tool for dissolving polygon boundaries

[Paolo Corti]

> Is there a FOSS command line tool that runs under Linux for dissolving
> polygon boundaries based on a field in an attribute table that (ideally)
> works directly with shapefiles? There are a number of non-cli tools out
> there, but I'm working with all US counties on a county by county basis, and
> wanted to avoid importing each individual county into another product.

Hi Dan

What you need to do could easily be accomplished with GDAL and GEOS
(for example with Python) or GeoTools and JTS (with Java), but as far
as I know you should write yourself a script for performing this
action.
I don't know it there may already be production ready scripts
performing what you need with this technologies.
Your only option here could be to use GRASS, but as far as I know you
need to import your shapefile to the GRASS database, use a GRASS
command (v.reclass [0]) and export back to shapefile the result, so it
is not very direct.

best regards
P

[0] http://grass.fbk.eu/gdp/html_grass64/v.reclass.html


-- 
Paolo Corti
Geospatial software developer
web: http://www.paolocorti.net
twitter: @paolo_corti